it would be another 100 days and another 100 nights until the heart of the land of uvis sumur was reached. I was one who was used to the slavery and toil of the longer walks so i was accustomed to this harsh reality. Poor kumat was blabbering about with his hands on his head in tears. What is it you blabbering man, what?
— O dromio, o dromio, i cannot walk any longer sir, i am tired! A century of days is more than the man can bear!
You bared forty with much gusto man. What happened to the strength you had that i am tasked to possess?
— I do not want to walk anymore and that is that.
And so that was that. We stopped at a tavern (the first i had ever seen) and all around was beer and food and benches, which kumat lied on and started sleeping immediately. I took a beer and paid the man of the tavern one shekel. I started drinking before stopping after one sip for this was no beer like any i had ever drank before. It attacked my eyes and split their agreements in two, danced in my ears and on my tongue, frolicked on my skin. I lowered the drink and sat down.
So it was god that had sent me on this way to uvis sumur. Why me? What have i done that is righteous - or perhaps what have i done that is wrong - for him to choose me as his sword [note: this word appears to also mean “stick”] in the battle against a supposed evil? Did this town really need saving? Why did god come to kumat and not me? He is not a monk. His dress is of the common folk. His standing is higher than i of course. He is a common man and i am a sufferer. I toil and slave and he sells his wares made from my grain which has dried since the sands of time started flowing to the river of despair.
I thought for a while unlike most heroes when kumat revived from his slumber. Why did god come to you o kumat?
— Is that the first query i am doomed to answer before my senses have come back to my body?
Why?
— God did not come to me. He came to the temple of the seven floods [an important temple to the Garrison society] and [section missing] from uvis sumur.
How can you say there is no other dromio?
— There is no other in this land.
What about other lands?
— There are none.
There are none?
— There are none.
I walked around, my eyes seeing one kumat as two and my ears hearing servants of god clamouring for figs. I grabbed my beer and sipped again, and this time my eyes were clear. In their clarity came the clouds of hearing. Kumat rubbed his head and he turned to face the outside.
— It was the times before uvis sumur when men used to be prosperous and women used to be fortunate. Now it seems that the tides have changed.
I scoffed at this remark.
— Why do you scoff o dromio?
Kumat was speaking like an elder when he was but a boy. Were you alive when the times were times and the bad was good?
— No yet I remember hearing about these things from my father.
I guffawed and howled much to kumat’s ire. O kumat, you cannot say such things when you remember none! You did not frolick in the lands of the good before the tide of evil drank from its bosom! All you know is the old suffering of the good and the new joy of the bad! Once I too was prosperous as a sufferer before the demise!
— I have heard enough!
And thus kumat was asleep again. As I sipped my beer, I thought of how young poor kumat was and how he was thinking of such things before he had lived. I chuckled over his boyish arrogance for some time as my senses continued to play tricks on me. When I was finished, kumat was still asleep. I waited for him to wake.
When he awoke we set off towards our century of days and century of nights. It was the stars that we were to capture, all against the evil of uvis sumur and his drying up of the soil and tarnishing of that town from perfection to only beautiful.